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Week 10_Nuclear Colonization
35
Thank You!
Nuclear Colonization
Overview of Main Themes
Main Themes
- Changing definition of nuclear power
- Victims of nuclear colonization deemed as not worthy of and not associated with nuclear technology, yet forced to deal with the consequences of nuclear postcolonialism
- murky line between nuclear violence/war/colonization and postcolonial consequences --> slow versus fast violence
a theme of this class as a whole:
side note*
https://bureauoflinguisticalreality.com/portfolio/teuchnikskreis/
Quote
"Destruction becomes normalized and the remanence before the exposure is forgotten. We cannot erase that we’re the cause and effect of environmental destruction due to humans inflicted destruction."
- Laura's affection reflection
Questions to Consider:
Hecht, 2012
Based on the Hecht reading and the editorial article, what is the relationship between the Global North and Global South in regards to nuclear energy?
Are there, if any, connections of this theme between this week’s readings and past ones?
Nuclear Geographies Dependent on Imperialism
Postcolonial Nuclearity
- narrative of Western countries needing nuclear power to prevent themselves from being colonized
- narrative of countries freed from imperialism needing modernity + development to prevent future colonization
- narrative of keeping uranium "safe" through monopolization
DEF: essential nuclear difference
Nuclear Exceptionalism
Fission meant splitting atoms, and the resulting rupture in nature's very building blocks propelled claims to a corresponding rupture in historical space and time (6)”
Narratives
atomic fantasies, nuclear nationalism v. nuclear apocalypse, self destruction
Nuclear Narratives
Nuclear Orientalism
- nuclear as a part of Western "common sense"
- fear of nuclear power escaping from the "rational North"
Nuclear power as "safe"
Banality Contradiction
Duck And Cover film (1950s)
https://www.history.com/news/duck-cover-drills-cold-war-arms-race
Safeguarding the Nuclear Order
Controlling Nuclear Power
- Methods of control: US pledge system, advocacy for western European inspection exception, Indian narrative of regulations as colonial inequalities
- 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — 5 “nuclear weapons states” agreed to cooperate in the spread of nuclear technology among themselves but disarming all the other countries
yet nuclear tech as unalienable right for developing areas?
(Non)Nuclear Lives of Mines
Dangers of Mining
- Radiation protection as a health issue, not nuclear energy issue → mines not considered nuclear for regulation
- Difference between “first world” and “third world” safety standards
- Issues with establishing causality
- Standards for exposure are technopolical — “as low as reasonably achievable”
https://www.northernminer.com/news/editorial-global-geopolitics-sideswipe-african-uranium-miners/1003807342/
Editorial Article
Questions to Consider
Johnston 2016
How do narratives of nuclear disasters shape who ends up shouldering the responsibilities of reparation?
What is obscured by conventional depictions of nuclear power, and what are its impacts on future solutions?
“US scientists fully expected adverse health effects to not only occur in the first generation of people exposed to fallout, but in the subsequent generations of people who live in a contaminated setting (6)”
Marshallese as human subjects
“Short-term stability is prioritized over the long-term health of people and the environment on which they depend”
Disregard for Marshallese
Postcolonial Statehood
Results
- 36 forms of radiogenic cancers and disease, and resulting immune system vulnerability
- High diabetes prevalence, high infant mortality, 15 year shorter life span compared to Americans
- Extinction of self-sufficient sustainable lifestyles
- Loss of traditionally held land + marine resources
U.S. Response + Narrative
U.S. Response
- U.S. rejected validity of human rights review of nuclear weapon testing
- Cold War Period - gov't control over scientific findings to manage public fears, emphasis on nuclear militarism not being a threat
- Contradictions of official narratives were censored, authors blacklisted — confirmed by 1994 US Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments
- Propaganda that radiation is natural, “trust us” narrative
Conclusion: need for citizen science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyhZcWy1Ero#action=share
Video
Article
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/03/15/explainer-what-caused-the-incident-at-fukushima-daiichi/#31cb67b06213
Questions to Consider:
Masco 2011
Based on the Mascoe reading and the movie trailer, how are past nuclear events contributing to changes in our biome today?
Is the featured quote an accurate summarization of the nuclear state? Why or why not?
Them! Film
Them! Film Clip
Film Commentary
- Movie was produced after largest US nuclear test ("Bravo", Bikini Islands, 1954)
- Them! Film shifted our nuclear narrative - from “national security” to “imminent threat” by producing huge mutant ants because of adverse effects of radiation
- Ridicules idea of containment because bombs were created to deter threats but then created new ones, placing the blame on ants and not the state for releasing radiation
Observed Effects In & Around Test Sites
- Nuclear waste can be spread easily - flies landed in waste and spread contamination dozens of miles away, requiring 2.5 million dollar clean up
- 109 sites too radioactive to clean up (Department of Energy)
- Bees now transmit radioactive materials to neighboring localities and poisoning individuals
- 4x Thryoid Cancer increase in los alamos area
Quote
Nixon: Precision Warfare and Slow Violence
Nixon 2011
Main argument: We need a new conversation about the way wars kill- that include the “unseen human and environmental costs”
Recall from the reading the ways in which language is used to connotate different war strategies, specifically the use of nuclear weapons. How is it used to create an air of unaccountability for those deploying bombs and nuclear technology on foreign soil?
Intersectionality, Invisibility, non-Immediacy
Realities of war: more complex than immediate killings from bomb detonation; renal failure, leukemia, birth defects, uranium in urine, carcinogenic environment
-warfare affects more than just the immediate temporal and environmental surroundings
Themes
- effects of war may not be visible immediately after, or ever
- "precision" implies swiftness with no lasting effects; in reality, these tactics have "indiscriminate effects"
"One man's precision guided missile is another man's weapon of indiscriminate destruction" characterizes relationship between victims and perpetrators of nuclear colonization
What parallels can you draw to previous readings?
“Just as in Western nations toxic waste sites tend to be placed near poor or minority communities, so too unexploded ordinance pollution is concentrated in the world's most impoverished societies, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, Somalia, Nicaragua, El Salvador” pg 226
Quotes
- outsourcing pollution
- unequal resource distribution
- targeting developing areas
Political Ecology: How do current political regimes advocate for "smart wars"? How does it perpetuate the exclusion of deleterious environmental effects?
What parallels can you draw to previous readings?
"We need counter-narratives that locate the Highway of Death circa 1991 as not a scene of finality but an early moment in a far longer story of violence" pg 215
Quote #2
-U.S. hypocrisy - stringent domestic regulations vs. global ignorance and unconcern
-"military benefits are much larger compared to any health problems" pg 215
How would developed and developing countries answer these question differently?
What marks the end of the war?
What is a casualty of war?
Rhetoric as an actor
- "Smart war"- marketing of technologically advanced war strategies implies its lessened degree of harmfulness
-"Depleted Uranium" - to quell contestation to use of nuclear weapons
- "War" vs. "Operation" - different implied meanings
-“Fractal wars” -implies a disconnectedness and only virtual immediacy
-"Anti-personnel" bomb technology was ineffective in distinguish soldier from child; juxtaposed to "precision warfare" in which violent consequences muddled by death lag
Rachel Carson- "The rhetoric of precision and progress could cloak barbarous consequences"
Political Ecology
"Wherever troops use cluster bombs and/or landmines, a tangle of economic, humanitarian, and environmental crises typically results. National reconstruction and the safe return of refugees are impeded; medical resources become overstretched; rural dwellers face a diabolical choice between abandoning their pastures or fields and risking death or mutilation; amidst a degraded environment, pressure on the land increases, fueling further rounds of conflict. These developments often lead to rapid deforestation and the slaughtering of wildlife.” pg 225
Depleted Uranium
Interest in DU warfare caused by
- increased kill range; higher penetrative capacity
-extreme cheapness compared to other weapons technology; by product of nuclear testing
Depleted Uranium
U.S. Department of Defense offloading waste (DU) for profit- "anti-environmental recycling"
DU half-life is 4.5 billion years; can enter food systems, soil, waterways (aquifers), carcinogenic environment ultimately affecting human bodies and cells for generations
Uranium replaces calcium in the body; causes tumors, alters DNA, crosses blood-brain-barrier
U.S. denies connection between Depleted Uranium and Gulf War Syndrome
Gulf War Syndrome- the illnesses/side effects faced by veterans after exposure to neurotoxic chemicals, specifically Depleted Uranium
Videos
"D.U. fragments are both a significant cause of Gulf War syndrome and a hazard to civilians for an indefinite period of time" - Dr. Asaf Durakovic, retired U.S. Army colonel, former head of nuclear medicine at a veterans’ hospital